Reasoning and Reading in Adults. A New Reasoning Task for Detecting the Visual Impendance Effect

Abstract

The visual impedance hypothesis states that at the time of reasoning, the reading context provokes visual images, which may add irrelevant details to an inference and thus could hamper reasoning. This study aims to create a new visual version of a reasoning task, similar to the traditional propositional task of relational syllogisms, but based on visuospatial components. Using such a task, it would be possible to investigate the deductive ability of relational inferences in tests without the need for reading. Two reasoning tasks were used and measures of working memory, visuospatial memory, intelligence, and reading comprehension were taken. The participants were 61 university students without reading difficulties. Results show that both versions of the reasoning task work similarly in finding the main reasoning effects expected. Findings support the visual impedance effect, that is, fewer correct responses in problems with imaginable contents than with neutral ones. They indicate that this new visual task could be used to explore reasoning skills without reading being involved, and this would be useful for testing reasoning in people both with and without reading difficulties.

Testing the visual impedance effect in children with and without reading difficulties using a new visual reasoning task

“…It was expected that reasoning would not be affected by literacy skills. This study with adults without any RD (Panagiotidou et al, 2018) showed that the new pictorial task was similar to the traditional propositional task used to measure transitive reasoning with simple problems and to detect the visual impedance effect (in the imaginable invalid difficult problems of the pictorial task), showing that this task was also useful to detect this effect (Authors, 2018). The absence of the impedance effect in adults with RD strongly indicates that they are processing transitive inferences in a different way that could be related to difficulties in reading (Bacon & Handley, 2010, 2014.…”

“…A pilot study was performed that aimed at assessing whether the pictorial/visual reasoning task using pictures instead of written protocols, designed in a previous investigation with adult participants (Panagiotidou et al, 2018), could be used with a child population at primary school level.…”

“…Until now, there has been no other investigation connecting the study of transitive reasoning skills in primary school children with reading skills, using the visual impedance effect as a marker of reasoning. All the reported studies have been carried out on adults, with and without RD (Bacon & Handley, 2010, 2014Knauff & Johnson-Laird, 2002;Panagiotidou et al, 2018). It was therefore thought it would be interesting to study the relationship between reasoning and reading comprehension skills already suggested in previous research (e.g., Daugaard et al, 2017;Kendeou, van de Broek, Helder, & Karlsson, 2014), using the new reasoning task.…”

“…The aim of this work, therefore, is to study reasoning skills, specifically transitive reasoning with simple problems, in children by using the new visual/pictorial task (Panagiotidou et al, 2018). As the task has no reading requirements, it is more suitable for testing reasoning in primary school children, especially if they have RD.…”

“…As part of the study, a pilot experiment was carried out first in order to test whether the new pictorial task, validated in adults (Panagiotidou et al, 2018), could be used in a child population. Once this was determined, a second study (Experiment 1) was performed in order to test reasoning skills and the visual impedance effect in children with and without RD, all studying in primary school.…”